Breathe
by Red River
Summary: When I was very small, my mother told me, “Being in love with a man gives you wings.” My sister and I haven’t been quite that lucky. Xiao Qiao introspective, focus on Da.Xiao Qiao relationship.


A/N: Songfic set to Anna Nalick's "Breathe." First person introspective from Xiao Qiao's POV - a little darker than I originally intended, but not too dark. 

This fic was inspired by playing through Xiao Qiao's musou mode, and realizing again exactly how little regard the Qiao sisters get from their husbands. It's meant to emphasize the relationship between the Qiao sisters, which was woefully underdone in the games, and their lack of relationship with their husbands. Let me know what you think.

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_Two a.m. and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake  
"Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?  
I don't love him. Winter just wasn't my season." _

When I was very small, hardly bigger than the sunbeams slipping under the open terrace roof and over my mother's weaving hands, I put my head down against her skirt and felt her breath through the fabric, every gentle heartbeat as warm as the summer on my face. My mother lifted my chin with her hands and looked me straight in the eye, her smile soft as apple blossoms in a fraying wind, shifting back and forth in the shadows of her face as it always did when she was happiest.

"Someday, little bird," she told me, petting my hair back behind one ear. "Someday you'll know what it means to be in love. Someday a man will come along and give you wings, and your feet will never touch the floor again."

All of my childhood, I waited for that man. On the day that I married and came into this household, beautiful curtains and clouds of servants parting to let me through like the wisps of a dream, I thought I had found him. So did she – my sister, my constant companion, my comrade quivering with excitement and apprehension as two soldiers took us by the hands, sharing a look that only they understood beneath the red of their wedding ribbons.

_As we walk through the doors, so accusing their eyes  
Like they have any right at all to criticize  
Hypocrites  
You're all here for the very same reason _

Of course, my mother was a little naïve. Time has taught me that, at least. My mother was lucky enough to love the man she married, and luckier in the affection that he returned to her, treasuring her like the last fruits of summer before autumn leaves take their place. My sister and I haven't been quite that lucky – we didn't marry for love. We married for beauty, and for loyalty, and for sanctuary. But beauty is only as shallow as the eyes and loyalty does not breed love – not for us, anyway. Not from them.

_'Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable  
And life's like an hourglass glued to the table  
No one can find the rewind button, girl  
So cradle your head in your hands _

When I was very small, my mother told me, "Once you have a husband, little bird, he'll be everything to you. Not a moment will go by without him holding your thoughts. Every time he leaves you, a little piece of your heart will break."

My sister and I still laugh about her words sometimes. Luckily for us, she was wrong – if that were the cost of the emptiness we receive, I think we would both run away from the Sun family estate and take our chances along the road, the elements of the unforgiving world far gentler than the sting of unrequited love. I would take the kisses of the rain over the barren throbbing of a lonely heart any day, because at least the storm has the grace to kiss back, to sweep me up in arms that are cold but full and hold me so tightly that I cannot swallow – the only time I am held like that.

_And breathe, just breathe  
Oh, breathe  
Just breathe _

But my sister and I are lucky. Our hearts don't break in their absence, because we don't love them either.

_May he turn twenty-one on the base at Fort Bliss  
Just today he sat down to the flask in his fist  
Ain't been sober since maybe October of last year_

It isn't that our husbands are unkind. My sister and I have every comfort we could ask for, and company to fill a thousand days in the servants who wait on us. We have the freedom of the Sun manor and the town beyond it, and the right to our unchallenged privacy. They burden us with nothing – nothing at all. Especially not their hearts, too full of war and ambition to harbor the gentle affection my sister and I are looking for.

It isn't that they're unkind. But Sun Ce has his dreams and Zhou Yu has his Little Conqueror – and even if his soul weren't given in tribute to the rising star who leads our empire, my bed would still hold only one, because my husband is more honestly married to the affairs of the state of Wu than he is to me.

_Here in town you can tell he's been down for a while  
But my God, it's so beautiful when the boy smiles  
Wanna hold him  
Maybe I'll just sing about it _

My sister and I don't talk about it very often, but I know that she and I still have something in common – our virginity, unquestioned and unasked for by the men who were supposed to give us wings. But she doesn't mind, and neither do I – there is nothing I want from my husband's hands if his heart does not come with them.

_'Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable  
And life's like an hourglass glued to the table  
No one can find the rewind button, boys  
So cradle your head in your hands _

When I was very small, my mother told me, "Once you're married, no one else will matter. No woman in the world will be able to hold your attention the way he can."

I don't know if she was right or not. My husband has never stayed beside me long enough to hold my attention, and I know I have never held his. But in a way, I think it's better that way. We are like two distant stars wheeling around unseen poles, passing only in a flash of light before the vastness of the ebony sky tears us apart again. Who would seek to move the stars against their courses?

_And breathe, just breathe  
Yeah, breathe  
Just breathe _

My mother would say that my life is empty, but I have something few other girls can claim. My freedom. My freedom, and my sister – my sister who is my unwavering anchor, the warmth that my husband has never even wanted to supersede.

_There's a light at each end of this tunnel, you shout  
'Cause you're just as far in as you'll ever be out _

Which is why I have risen from my bed and pulled my sleeping robe as tightly around my body as it will go, pouting against the coldness of the floor as my bare feet linger on the tile and each stride carries me closer to the door. It's chilly tonight, and the bed is empty, as usual – Zhou Yu returned from a campaign tonight, but he and Sun Ce barely waited for dinner to end before they retreated to the library, already enthralled with the words of war that keep them so busy. As I pass by the open door, I can see them still hard at work, the oil lamps flickering over their faces as they debate some strategy or another in hushed voices.

I pause in the entrance just long enough to watch a confident smile come over Sun Ce's face, pulling a smirk onto my husband's stony countenance the way only battle and the company of his sworn brother can. Then I step back and move on, slipping down the corridor on feet that are used to caressing the shadows and the silence of the sleeping manor.

_  
And these mistakes you've made, you'll just make them again  
If you only try turning around _

When I was very small, barely old enough to understand her words, my mother told me, "Being in love with a man gives you wings."

I may never know if she was right about that. But little by little, my sister and I have been making our own wings – picking up the feathers that have fallen from our hearts and stringing them together, one tiny wisp at a time, until we have a great blanket of wings, a great chariot to carry us into the sky in a way that I don't think romantic love ever could.

_Two a.m. and I'm still awake writing a song  
If I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me  
Threatening the life it belongs to_

She's still awake when I knock on the door, push back the closed screen to reveal her delicate, lamplit features and the needlework at peace in her lap. "Little bird," she says, setting her fabrics aside and straightening her skirts as she pats the floor beside her knee. I close the door behind my silent heel and tumble to the ground so that I can bury my head in her lap, wrap my arms around her waist in the way I couldn't when I was smaller – the reciprocal hold that my mother never needed.

My sister brushes the bangs back out of my face and her fingers are so much softer than my husband's would be, rough with the calluses of swordplay – so soft that I don't have to wish for a lover or a change in Zhou Yu's heart, because her touch is warmer than his could ever be.

_And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd  
'Cause these words are my diary screaming out loud  
And I know that you'll use them however you want to _

My sister lets her hands fall still along the slope of my back, rubbing soothing circles into the silk that has adorned our bodies since we came to the Sun family and the realm of their rich courtiers. I push my face into her stomach and breathe in the scents that never leave her – ginseng and plum blossoms, the aromas that have chased her footsteps ever since we were small enough to quarrel by tugging on each other's pigtails.

She's been my protective shield since we were too small to think we'd ever need one – since my mother's understanding of love was the only one my mind knew how to entertain – and the comfort of her embrace never wanes, chasing back my unsettled thoughts like the tides of a patient ocean. Of all the blessings my mother quoted, I don't know why she never mentioned my sister – she is the only beauty in the world that has never threatened to leave me.

_But you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable  
And life's like an hourglass glued to the table_

My sister begins to sing, and I recognize the song instantly, the years of our shared childhood flitting across my mind under the spell of the music. It's a song our father used to play on his lute after dinner, when his eyelids were lazy but his fingers danced like enchanted spiders over the strings, wrinkled digits waxing smooth in the failing light. My mother would call for the dishes to be cleared away and my sister would fold her arms around me as she's doing now, and we would sit in rapture of the sound, helpless to move against the force of his music.

I love the song, and I love the hazy embrace that the oil lamp is pulling us into, so close that her skin is almost mine. But I'm crying anyway, soaking her robes with my shivering tears, sobs breaking out of my throat to pound against the walls around us like hoarse thunderclaps.

_No one can find the rewind button now  
Sing it if you understand_

My sister doesn't flinch – she just puts her hands on either side of my face and pulls my chin up until my wavering eyes are even with hers, twin sepia boring into mine with the security of uncompromising stone.

"Hush, little bird," she soothes, pressing my face against the skin of her neck. "Someday we'll find someone for you – I promise. Someday you'll find someone to love."

I want to tell her that I already have, and I already do – that I love her more than I could ever love a man, and that I need her willow arms more than I could ever need a romantic touch. But I've lost my voice in the mindless tears and her whisper disarms my tongue again, leaving me mute in her embrace. So I settle for holding onto her, too, my hands weaker but more desperate than hers in the cloth of her midnight robes, holding us together like the threads we wind around our wings and the bundles of feathers just waiting to fly.

_And breathe, just breathe  
Oh, breathe  
Just breathe _

Somewhere far away, I can hear footsteps and the voices of our husbands moving down the shadowed corridor in the direction of the outer grounds, in the direction of the stables and the armory that will take them back to war. I can hear their shadows disappearing as soundlessly as ghosts, murmuring goodbye to the sleeping house in the way that they don't bother, campaign and conquest the only matters occupying their minds. I listen to the vanishing sounds as my sister continues singing, her nightingale's voice melting over the lyrics and swallowing their retreat in the melody that keeps us together on the floor of her quarters, a bundle of tangled silk defying the order to unravel.

It isn't that Sun Ce and Zhou Yu are unkind – it isn't that they have no wings. It's just that their wings are leading them other ways; they have no feathers to spare for us. But my sister and I don't need them anymore, because we have wings of our own.

Whenever I lose my wings, my sister is willing to lend me hers for as long as I need them – to stand on the earth as my anchor while her faith lifts me into the arms of the star-spattered sky, into the kisses of the waiting wind that only make me want to fly higher. And whenever I falter, she patches my wings back together with the silver thread of her tongue and her nimble hands, never content to let the dust soil my scattered feathers.

That is the love that never lets me touch the ground.

_Oh breathe - just breathe  
Breathe  
Just breathe _


End file.
